Basic En Garde in Foil Fencing

Video Transcript

"Before we get started on any attacks, I want to review your most important technique, and that's your basic En Garde. In your En Garde you want your feet to be shoulder width apart, your knees bent, so that your body weight is distributed evenly between your feet. Your front leg points forward. Your back leg is perpendicular to that so that you make a nice solid "L" with both of your heels lining up, so that you can easily move forward, and backwards. Hold your sword arm out. I'm a right-handed fencer so that's going to be my right arm, with your arm slightly bent, your sword held between your forefinger and your thumb. And you have your chest facing, usually, this way, away from your opponent so that you minimize target area. Some fencers like to fence straight on, a lot of times in fight choreography you'll fence straight on. But as you can see, this part of my body is much more vulnerable to attack than if I turn it back this way. Now my back arm, in classical fencing, is going to be up behind me, and this serves a few purposes. One, is it keeps the back arm out of the way of harm. Regulation is actually that your back shoulder can never be ahead of your front shoulder, your sword arm shoulder. But if you keep it straight back you keep it well out of harm's way, and also when you make a lunge, when this arm comes back, it helps balance you. So it helps balance you both in moving forward and backwards and it also provides an interesting, useful rudder when you make a lunge and the arm flies backwards. So again, feet shoulder width apart, feet perpendicular, body straight, facing this way, while your face will always point in the direction you would like your foil to go, which is forward."